Ep.1 Value Lifelong Learning

Today, I am going to talk with you about the importance of valuing lifelong learning.

This is important if you want to be able to improve your situation (in other words, get unstuck), if you want to keep up with new developments, and for staying interested in life.

Lifelong learning is continuing to learn new ideas and information over the span of your life. It means learning doesn’t stop once you leave high school! You have to have the right attitude!

Problem examples:

As a therapist, I work at the hospital on an acute unit with mostly teenagers. Many of them are brought to the hospital by someone who thinks they need help, but the teenager does not. Some, not all, stay closed off the whole time. They are not open to learning. It is all stupid. And coping skills don’t work. Some 14 or 15 or 16 year olds believe they know more than anyone else and anyone who tries to teach them or tell them anything is looked at with disdain. How much do you think they are going to get out of being in the hospital program? We just hope that something they hear clicks with them at some point.

Examples of it going well:

Contrast that with people who call me up and make an appointment to come see me for counseling! Those people come in and they want to know more. They are interested in what I could teach them. They are wanting to explore and improve. They take the concepts we talk about and try them at home and then come back and tell me how it went. They like considering a different perspective and growing. These people are making good use of the therapeutic relationship and will get something out of it.

I, of course, as a counselor really like the clients who want to learn!

Now, when we talk about lifelong learning, here is what you need:

First:

Be interested and willing to learn new things

Here is an example from the past. When computers or smartphones first came out, many people didn’t want to know about it. They didn’t want to learn about what these things did, how they worked, what they needed to know to be able to use them.

There were a variety of reasons for this such as thinking they weren’t smart enough to learn about it,

they didn’t want to look dumb,

or they thought they were too old to learn something so new and different. They might even have thought that their brains didn’t work that way.

Well, that thinking was incorrect because we know that pretty much everyone young and old now uses this technology.

For lifelong learning you need to:

Look for sources of learning

It's simple.You are not going to learn new things if you don’t expose yourself to new information. If you stay in the same place doing the same thing in the same way day after day and converse with the same people, you shelter yourself from new learning. You need to expose yourself to sources of learning such as books, podcasts, videos, traveling, trying new activities and talking with new people.

Another trait you need for lifelong learning is:

Don’t be satisfied

If you are too comfortable with the status quo, you are likely to get stuck in a rut. Going to work, coming home, eating dinner, watching TV and then going to bed might feel familiar. It is easier than trying to figure out something new each day. But it can also turn into days just running together. Life is more interesting when it isn’t all the same!

Let me tell you how learning has gone for me over the years. As I went through middle school and high school, I loved to read. Much of it was fiction but I also would browse through encyclopedias. (I am going to show how old I am when I say that we didn’t have computers and the internet in our homes back then.)

In college, others would try to get away with skimming the required reading. I didn’t want to skip any of it. I wanted to read all that was assigned and not miss anything.

I took drawing classes over the years and especially when my children were napping I would do art. As the children left the toddler stage, life became too busy and I was fully involved in being a mom. Later, I did some camping with the kids and after that, I took up kayaking. I settled on some hobbies such as making wire-wrapped jewelry.

And now, as I develop my online course and other offerings, I am learning so much about various delivery programs, recording and video, and online applications! I am finding I do have a knack for it, I like it and it is fun for me!

I am still learning and I hope you don’t think you are done yet.

Summary

I hope you have been inspired to value lifelong learning if that wasn’t already your thing.

I urge you to take advantage of my materials that I am continually developing.

Subscribe to the Calm & Confident You Podcast on your favorite streaming service and visit that website HERE

Look around the pages of this Growing Emotional Strength website.

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Keep learning, take care, and I’ll see you next time!

Lucretia Donahue-Reed M.S.